ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. Microplastics have recently entered the public consciousness for finding their way into our bodies and to some of the most remote places on Earth. But now, a much smaller, potentially much more nefarious, and less understood threat is drawing scientist’s attention—nanoplastics. They’re […]
Read More
Xochimilco is a large, semirural district in the south of Mexico City, home to a vast network of canals surrounding farming plots called chinampas. Starting around A.D. 900, this maze of earth and water produced food for the Xochimilcas, a Náhuatl speaking people who were among the first to populate the region and engineer its […]
Read More
As leaders from nearly every nation on the planet gather on Thursday in the United Arab Emirates to confront global warming, many are carrying a sense of disillusionment into the annual climate summit convened by the United Nations. Countries talk about the need to cut the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet, but emissions […]
Read More
Over 50 years ago, my wife, Malinda, and I bought a chef’s knife of carbon steel that we still use. It could be passed down to several generations. Compare that to the junk stainless steel ones that might not rust but that won’t hold an edge to cut a tomato. Cheap products, made poorly and […]
Read More
I spent the past week glued to my phone, as I’m sure many of you did, scrolling through endless news and horrible videos of the violence in the Middle East. Sometimes, when global disasters or conflicts happen, people will whip up an infographic pointing out the (occasionally tenuous) connections to climate change; I generally roll […]
Read More
The food we eat and the roads we drive on. Our health and safety. Our cultural heritage, natural environments and economic flourishing. Nearly every cherished aspect of American life is under growing threat from climate change and it is effectively too late to prevent many of the harms from worsening over the next decade, a […]
Read More
The Michigan Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a bundle of clean energy bills, transforming a state at the center of industrial America into a leader in the fight against climate change. The legislation, which passed both chambers of the Statehouse with narrow Democratic majorities, represents a turnaround for a state that had long […]
Read More
A significant shift in donor contributions to nonprofits fighting climate change in recent years has left some of the nation’s biggest environmental organizations facing critical shortfalls in programs on toxic chemicals, radioactive contamination and wildlife protection. The Natural Resources Defense Council is shutting down its nuclear mission and has laid off its top lawyer in […]
Read More
At the top of Mount Hamilton, near San Jose, Calif., Lick Observatory looks out over the dense sprawl of the San Francisco Bay Area. On a clear day from the 4,200-foot summit, you can see San Francisco to the north, as well as the entrance to Yosemite Valley, 120 miles east, as the crow flies. […]
Read More
On a bright September day on the harbor in Copenhagen, several hundred people gathered to welcome the official arrival of Laura Maersk. Laura was not a visiting European dignitary like many of those in attendance. She was a hulking containership, towering a hundred feet above the crowd, and the most visible evidence to date of […]
Read More
Many researchers see an expansion of nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gas emissions from its power generation, as an essential component of strategies to combat global climate change. Yet there is still strong resistance to such expansion, and much of that is based on the issue of how to safely dispose of the resulting […]
Read More
Many efforts to reduce transmission of diseases like Covid-19 and the flu have focused on measures such as masking and isolation, but another useful approach is reducing the load of airborne pathogens through filtration or germicidal ultraviolet light. Conventional UV sources can be harmful to eyes and skin, but newer sources that emit at a […]
Read More
Smoke from wildfires in Canada is expected to drift over New York and other Northeastern states on Monday, officials have warned, adding that they were anticipating slight impacts on air quality in some places. Forecasters were expecting plumes of wildfire smoke to reach New York City around sunrise on Monday and leave a visible haze, […]
Read More
If the programs fail, they could seriously mar the I.R.A.’s public image. And right now, they are faltering. Perhaps the biggest problem is inherent to their design. The most successful federal programs are simple, straightforward and easy to use. Think of the U.S. Postal Service sending free at-home Covid tests to all Americans or the […]
Read More
Decarbonization of national economies will be key to achieving global net-zero emissions by 2050, a major stepping stone to the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (and ideally 1.5 C), and thereby averting the worst consequences of climate change. Toward that end, the United States has pledged to […]
Read More
AI’s carbon footprint is no open-and-shut case, according to scientists from the University of California-Irvine and MIT, who published a paper earlier this year on the open access site arXiv.org that shakes up energy use assumptions of generative AI models, and which set off a debate among leading AI researchers and experts this past week. […]
Read More
The world’s top diplomat, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, has lately been unusually blunt in his broadsides against fossil fuel producers. He has accused them of “profiting from destruction.” He has urged governments to stop funding coal and to put the brakes on new oil and gas projects. “History is coming for the […]
Read More
Imagine if France, Germany, and Spain were completely blanketed in forests — and then all those trees were quickly chopped down. That’s nearly the amount of deforestation that occurred globally between 2001 and 2020, with profound consequences. Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, producing between 6 and 17 percent of global greenhouse gas […]
Read More
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said on Sunday that he would sign a landmark climate bill that passed the state’s legislature last week requiring major companies to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, a move with national and global repercussions. The new law will require about 5,000 companies to report the amount of greenhouse gas […]
Read More
After three years leading biking tours through U.S. National Parks, Jackson Jewett decided it was time for a change. “It was a lot of fun, but I realized I missed buildings,” says Jewett. “I really wanted to be a part of that industry, learn more about it, and reconnect with my roots in the built […]
Read More
The transportation of goods forms the basis of today’s globally distributed supply chains, and long-haul trucking is a central and critical link in this complex system. To meet climate goals around the world, it is necessary to develop decarbonized solutions to replace diesel powertrains, but given trucking’s indispensable and vast role, these solutions must be […]
Read More
The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) provides Solutions Grants to help MIT researchers launch startup companies or products to commercialize breakthrough technologies in water and food systems. The Solutions Grant Program began in 2015 and is supported by Community Jameel. In addition to one-year, renewable grants of up to $150,000, the […]
Read More
In the race to draw down greenhouse gas emissions around the world, scientists at MIT are looking to carbon-capture technologies to decarbonize the most stubborn industrial emitters. Steel, cement, and chemical manufacturing are especially difficult industries to decarbonize, as carbon and fossil fuels are inherent ingredients in their production. Technologies that can capture carbon emissions […]
Read More
MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is launching the Clean Air and Water Labs, with support from Community Jameel, to generate evidence-based solutions aimed at increasing access to clean air and water. Led by J-PAL’s Africa, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South Asia regional offices, the labs will partner with government […]
Read More
The summer of 2023 has been a season of weather extremes. In June, uncontrolled wildfires ripped through parts of Canada, sending smoke into the U.S. and setting off air quality alerts in dozens of downwind states. In July, the world set the hottest global temperature on record, which it held for three days in a […]
Read More
Getting results from a blood test can take anywhere from one day to a week, depending on what a test is targeting. The same goes for tests of water pollution and food contamination. And in most cases, the wait time has to do with time-consuming steps in sample processing and analysis. Now, MIT engineers have […]
Read More